Category: News

A male government official and three female student fellows from the HKS Government Performance Lab meeting in a conference room around a table in front of a whiteboard.

MLD-630: Government Turnarounds with Jeffrey Liebman

Greg Dorchak

For the past ten years, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Social Policy Jeffrey Liebman has led the HKS Government Performance Lab which provides technical assistance to state and local governments interested in improving the results they achieve for their citizens. During that time Liebman and his team of experts, many HKS students and alumni fellows, have become experts at using analytics, outcomes-focused contracts, and cross-sector collaborations to help improve social service programs at the city and state levels. The GPL helps governments address thorny questions, like how to use data to find individuals who had fallen through the cracks, or how to restructure contracts to incentivize providers to serve the most difficult clients. Originally founded as a platform to explore the efficacy of Pay for Success (PFS) projects like Social Impact Bonds, where the governments agrees to pay for services only if they are shown to be successful, and allowing them to test promising new interventions and collaborative stakeholder models, the GPL evolved in response to a need Liebman and his team discovered across the agencies in which they worked. “Our government partners began to ask whether the same models we developed in PFS could be applied to help government social service agencies run their core operations better,” says Liebman.

Portrait photo of Harvard Professor Jeffrey Liebman in tan suit and tie in front of an HKS building
Jeffrey Liebman

Government leaders were seeking data-driven, boots-on-the-ground technical assistance, so Liebman rapidly expanded the GPL, placing students and HKS alumni with backgrounds in data analysis, public policy, and implementation in the field with a variety governments and agencies selected through national competitions. Projects began with programs aimed at reducing prison recidivism and reintegration for young people exiting the juvenile justice system, then expanded to include initiatives in maternal and infant health, high-quality pre-K, and addressing homelessness. Working across jurisdictions allowed Liebman and his team to discover and refine a set of approaches that responds to the recurring, problematic issues governments face.  For example, one of the key insights Liebman’s team uncovered during its PFS work was that procurement and contracting were too often seen as back-office compliance functions instead of used as powerful levers for systems change. GPL developed a signature framework for Results-Driven Contracting to help governments achieve high-priority strategic goals and drive improvements in service delivery.

This and other lessons are now taught at HKS each Fall in MLD-630: Government Turnarounds.  The course delivers proven strategies that government leaders have used to turn around troubled agencies and improve government performance. In teaching, Liebman draws on a mixture of lectures, case studies (often with guest visits by the case protagonists and other experts), and student presentations. Topics covered include:

1. Setting strategic goals and getting your organization to follow through on them.
2. Data-driven leadership strategies for improving agency performance, such as performance stat and delivery units.
3. Using results-driven contracting strategies to improve procurement.
4. Techniques for recruiting, training, re-energizing, and retaining talent.
5. Strategies for overcoming inertia.
6. Strategies for sustaining reforms.

MLD-630: Government Turnarounds is good complement to other MLD Courses in Government and Urban Innovation such as MLD-102 Getting Things Done: Management in a Development Context (Andrews); MLD-601 Operations Management (Fagan); MLD-605 Systems Thinking and Supply Chain Management (Fagan); MLD-618 Leadership, Social Change, and its Challenges: Boston as a Case Study (Winship & Jackson); and especially, MLD-412 Greater Boston Applied Field Lab: Advanced Budgeting, Financial Management and Operations (Bilmes) and  MLD-620M The Data Smart City: Driving Innovation with Technology (Goldsmith)

If you have any questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

Demystifying Power. Enabling Empowerment. | MLD-340 Power and Influence for Positive Impact with Julie Battilana

Greg Dorchak

Having been awarded the Academy of Management’s 2022 George R. Terry Book Award* for her book Power, for All, Julie Battilana brings her award-winning research to life in the Harvard classroom teaching MLD-340 Power and Influence for Positive Impact.

In Power, for All, Battilana and her co-author Tiziana Casciaro offer a new vision of power – what they define as the ability to influence someone else’s behavior – as deriving from having access to valued resources. Understanding what those resources are, people can take action to plan for, create, and sustain organizational and systems change. Drawing upon lessons derived from their rich research, and conveying lessons through wide-ranging case narratives, Battilana and Casciaro reveal the insights into power and influence that come from understanding (1) the two basic needs all human beings share—safety and self-esteem—and (2) the resources people seek to satisfy those needs: obvious ones, like money and status, but also less obvious and less tangible resources, like autonomy, achievement, affiliation, and morality. In sum Power, for All demystifies the essential mechanisms for acquiring and using power, showing that it is available to ALL people, not just those with personality, money, or, indeed, those willing to use intimidation, threats, or worse.

Split picture: At left: Tiziana Cascario and Julie Battilana seated together at a table. At right: book cover of their book, Power, for All.Pictured
Tiziana Casciaro and Julie Battilana with their award-winning book, Power, for All.

Building on these empowering ideas…,

…and designed for individuals at any stage of their career, Battilana’s course MLD-340 Power and Influence for Positive Impact will debunk the fallacies that many have about power and explore the fundamentals of power in interpersonal relationships, in organizations, and in society. In doing so, it will lift the veil on power, revealing to students what it really is, and how it works, ultimately unleashing their potential to build and use power to effect change at home, at work, and in society.

MLD-340 is ideal for students who want to make things happen, despite the obstacles that might stand in the way. Students will walk away prepared to exercise power positively to challenge the status quo in order to address the pressing social and environmental problems of our time. Students will learn conceptual models, tactical approaches, and assessment tools to develop their personal influence style and understand the political dynamics surrounding them. The subject matter in the course also specifically encourages students to use power responsibly, resist its corruptive perils, and challenges students to develop their own sense of what constitutes the ethical exercise of power and influence in their lives.  In the past a stellar array of in-class guests have been invited into the course, each an eminent and effective changemaker in their field:

MLD-340 is a useful complement to other MLD course offerings in the areas of Leadership, Negotiation, Organizing Civic, Political, and Social Action, and even Social Enterprise. If you have any questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

*The Academy of Management’s George R. Terry Book Award is granted annually to the book judged to have made the most outstanding contribution to the global advancement of management knowledge during the last two years. Books that contribute to the advancement of management theory, conceptualization, research, or practice are eligible for this prestigious award. Battilana and Casciaro were presented the award at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management on August 7, 2022.

Congratulations to Jennifer Lerner and Hannah Riley Bowles

Greg Dorchak

The Deans of the Harvard Kennedy School recently announced two honorary title designations for MLD Area faculty members. Warm congratulations to our two colleagues!

Jennifer S. Lerner will become the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor in Public Management at Harvard Kennedy School.

The chair is named in honor of Thornton F. Bradshaw, president of the Atlantic-Richfield Company, chairman of RCA, the MacArthur Foundation and the Aspen Institute. A graduate of Harvard University, Bradshaw served the university in various capacities, including as a member of the Board of Overseers and member of the visiting committee for Harvard Kennedy School. Jenn Lerner is a social psychologist known for her research on emotion, judgment and decision making. She is the co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, chairs the Leadership Decision Making executive education program at Harvard Kennedy School and serves as the first chief decision scientist of the United States Navy. She helped develop a framework to predict the effects of emotions on judgment and choice, such as the perceptions of risk, economic decisions, and attributions of responsibility. She is the author of numerous academic articles and her work has also been featured in major news outlets. Jenn teaches courses on decision making, leadership and social psychology at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Hannah Riley Bowles will become the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School.

This chair is named in honor of Roy E. Larsen, the long-time publisher of Time, Inc. A graduate of Harvard University, Larsen served his alma mater as a member of the Board of Overseers, and as a benefactor of Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, among other leadership roles at the university. Hannah Riley Bowles, an organizational behavior scholar, is known for research on women’s leadership and the role of gender in negotiation. She serves as area chair of Management, Leadership and Decision Sciences, co-directs the Women and Public Policy Program and chairs the Women and Power executive education program at Harvard Kennedy School. Her work focuses on negotiation as a micro-mechanism of inequality and women’s leadership advancement, examining both situational barriers and individual strategies. She is the author of numerous academic articles and her work has also been featured in major news outlets. Hannah teaches courses on management, leadership, negotiation and gender at HKS.

Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative Launches Mayoral Program

Greg Dorchak

The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative has launched the pilot of its year-long Mayors Program on City Leadership.  Program Faculty Director Jorrit de Jong of the HKS MLD Area says, “We have a great cohort of 40 mayors who are excited about the opportunities we are offering them and have high expectations. This year will be a pilot year and we put systems in place to enable rapid learning, in depth evaluation as well as ongoing impact assessment.”  In the course of this year-long program, mayors will be asked to identify a single priority to apply their learning to: a problem to be solved in the city, an opportunity to realize, or an organizational capability to improve.

Harvard's Jorrit de DeJong addresses city mayors
“Local government is close to the people. Mayors are most immediately held accountable when something goes wrong,” said Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer Jorrit de Jong, the initiative’s faculty director. © Bloomberg Philanthropies

For example, a mayor may choose to make her approach to reduce homelessness more data-driven, run experiments in the city’s effort to reduce obesity, or create a multi-sector approach to creating jobs. The priority may also pertain to organizational development: strengthen teaming efforts across city hall, engage front-line staff in innovation, or introduce a new performance leadership strategy. In the closing session later this year mayors will reflect on what they learned and how they would like to apply that going forward.  A subsequent program for the mayors’ senior staff will build on this innovation priority and will zoom in on the challenges of making change and delivering on the mayor’s agenda. BHCLI will follow up with several supports, including HBX Live sessions on topics that are most relevant and helpful to the greatest number of mayors, and bespoke assistance in the form of research, coaching or regional or thematic workshops.

After the Mayors Program, mayors will meet with the senior staff participating in the Senior Staff program and discuss their innovation priority. As the Senior Staff program focuses on making organizational change and strategy within and across organizational boundaries, program faculty will learn where the cities are coming from and what they are working on. Participating mayors and their staffs will benefit from this model by anchoring their learning in – and applying it to – concrete challenges in their work. Finally, the priority serves as a reference point for faculty follow ups and impact assessment. Our hope and expectation is that cities will be working on an innovation priority of their choice during their year-long engagement with the City Leadership Program.

For further details on the program launch, also read the Harvard Gazette article linked here.

Williams’s New Book Offers Guidance for Boundary Spanning Leaders

Greg Dorchak

Photo of Dean WilliamsLeaders today—whether in corporations or associations, nonprofits or nations—face massive, messy, multidimensional problems. No one person or group can possibly solve them—they require the broadest possible cooperation. However, in his recent book Leadership for a Fractured World (2015, Berrett-Koehler Publishers), HKS MLD Area scholar Dean Williams argues that our leadership models are still essentially tribal: individuals with formal authority leading in the interest of their own group. Williams goes on to outline an approach that enables leaders to transcend internal and external boundaries and help people to collaborate, even people over whom they technically have no power.

Drawing on what he’s learned from years of working in countries and organizations around the world, Williams shows leaders how to approach the delicate and creative work of boundary spanning, whether those boundaries are cultural, organizational, political, geographic, religious, or structural. Sometimes leaders themselves have to be the ones who cross the boundaries between groups. Other times, a leader’s job is to build relational bridges between divided groups or even to completely break down the boundaries that block collaborative problem solving. By thinking about power and authority in a different way, leaders will become genuine change agents, able to heal wounds, resolve conflicts, and bring a fractured world together.

The book features a forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Book Cover of Leadership for a Fractured World by Dean Williams